The science of Breaking Bad: Shotgun

Breaking Bad | Season 4 | Episode 5 | “Shotgun”

Mike and Jesse on the self-esteem run.

Mike and Jesse head off on a long road trip, while an increasingly incautious Walt attempts to confront Gus and shoots his mouth off to Hank. The Breaking Bad writers are masters of the slow build and unexpected outcome, so I am expecting some major fireworks in the next couple of episodes.

When Walt is doing his solo cook, we can see him heaving about some containers of sodium hydroxide (NaOH, a strong base) and diethyl ether ((C2H5)2O, a solvent). Working by oneself in a laboratory is not necessarily unsafe, but it is definitely not recommended (it is usually forbidden in industry, but not in academia). The hazards of solo working hit the news – again – in April of this year after the death of Michele Dufault at Yale.

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but the Chinese character on the chemical drums is 蜂 (fēng), which means wasp or bee. I don’t think that it’s a real chemical company. The serial number on the drum is 00892-B; no significance jumps out at me.

The characters written on Gale’s Los Pollos Hermanos napkin are MI-MB042266-GER. This could be some kind of offshore bank account for his salary (though the numbers don’t follow the standard format for IBAN or SWIFT codes), or it could be a code of some kind. Hank or Walt will probably figure it out before too long.

It just dawned on me that the inspiration for Madrigal Electromotive Gmbh could be based on the recent scandal involving Alfred L Wolff Gmbh importing tainted honey. In the real life case, a Stefanie Giesselbach is the honey executive arrested for the fraud and her co-defendants were 3 asian dudes. The barrel of methlyamine had “Bee” logos on them which made more sense if they were storing honey. Anyway, here’s the writeup on that case:http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/15579929-418/honey-executive-handed-not-so-sweet-prison-sentence.html